The earliest gardens seem to date from around 1300. Christopher Stevenson of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources thinks that they were abandoned from about 1600. This would have coincided with a revolt against the ruling class, triggered by food shortages when the timber ran out and people could no longer make rafts for deep-sea fishing or hunt the birds and animals that died out with the palm forests. Heyerdahl pinpoints the infighting to about 1680, based on a burn layer in the soil. Diamond also settles on a date of around 1680. “The collapse of Easter society followed swiftly upon the society’s reaching its peak of population, monument construction and environmental impact,” he writes.